Remembering an All Star in a League of His Own

The Major League All Star game will be happening this week here in Washington DC, so I imagine that a lot of our NVTBL players and their families will have their eyes focused on all the action at Nationals Park. Every year this game brings a flood of memories back to me of the first time I actually paid attention to an All Star game that didn't involve 11 or 12 year olds. That was a July when I was consumed with baseball and little ballplayers which frankly, wasn't all that unique.

But it was that specific July - five years ago - when the little boy's face I saw most often in my mind's eye was that of someone else's child. He so very well could have been mine. He had played both Little League and travel baseball through NVTBL for years. He had, like my boys, played some hoops, too. He had two siblings and friends galore. He liked hanging with his buddies and cheering college football.

But for all the similarities, there was one big difference between this boy and my three. You see, he wasn't playing ball that summer because he was dying of cancer at the age of thirteen.

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